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Networking is an essential part Unix and it offer lots of tools and command to diagnose any networking problem. When I was working on FIX Protocol we get a lot of support queries to see whether FIX Sessions are connected or not. Since FIX Protocol uses sockets you can use the netstat , telnet and other networking commands available in Linux for finding a problem and solve that.In this article, I will show you basic networking commands in Unix and for what purpose they are used. with the combination of grep and find command on them, you can troubleshoot most of the networking problem.

Networking Commands Example in Unix and Linux

These are most useful commands in my list while working on Linux server , this enables you to quickly troubleshoot connection issues e.g. whether another system is connected or not , whether another host is responding or not and while working for FIX connectivity for advanced trading system this tools saves quite a lot of time .This article is in continuation of my article How to work fast in Unix and Unix Command tutorials and Examples for beginners.• finding host/domain name and IP address - hostname• test network connection – ping• getting network configuration – ifconfig• Network connections, routing tables, interface statistics – netstat• query DNS lookup name – nslookup• communicate with another hostname – telnet• outing steps that packets take to get to network host – traceroute• view user information – finger• checking status of destination host - telnet

Example of Networking commands in Unix

let's see some example of various networking command in Unix and Linux. Some of them are quite basic e.g. ping and telnet and some are more powerful e.g. nslookup and netstat. When you used these commands in a combination of find and grep you can get anything you are looking for e.g. hostname, connection endpoints, connection status etc.

hostnamehostnamewith no options displays the machine's hostnamehostname –ddisplays the domain name the machine belongs tohostname –fdisplays the fully qualified host and domain namehostname –idisplays the IP address for the current machinepingIt sends packets of information to the user-defined source. If the packets are received, the destination device sends packets back. Ping can be used for two purposes1. To ensure that a network connection can be established.2. Timing information as to the speed of the connection.If you do ping www.yahoo.com it will display its IP address. Use ctrl+C to stop the test. ifconfigView network configuration, it displays the current network adapter configuration. It is handy to determine if you are getting transmit (TX) or receive (RX) errors.netstatMost useful and very versatile for finding a connection to and from the host. You can find out all the multicast groups (network) subscribed by this host by issuing "netstat -g"netstat -nap | grep portwill display process id of application which is using that portnetstat -a or netstat –allwill display all connections including TCP and UDPnetstat --tcp or netstat –twill display only TCP connectionnetstat --udp or netstat –uwill display only UDP connectionnetstat -gwill display all multicast network subscribed by this host.nslookupIf you know the IP address it will display hostname. To find all the IP addresses for a given domain name, the command nslookup is used. You must have a connection to the internet for this utility to be useful, e.g. $ nslookup blogger.comYou can also use the nslookup to convert hostname to IP Address and from IP Address from the hostname.tracerouteA handy utility to view the number of hops and response time to get to a remote system or website is traceroute. Again you need an internet connection to make use of this tool.

fingerView user information, displays a user’s login name, real name, terminal name and write status. this is pretty old Unix command and rarely used nowadays.telnetConnects destination host via the telnet protocol, if telnet connection establishes on any port means connectivity between two hosts is working fine.$ telnet hostname portwill telnet hostname with the port specified. Normally it is used to see whether the host is alive and the network connection is fine or not.

finger a network command? I first used it on a stand-alone machine that was NOT connected to the net. Then it's described as a "pretty old Unix command that is hardly used nowadays". What's the point of including it here?